The Best Business Tools for Business Owners

The emphasis on work and productivity does not seem to stop. Be it a big corporation or a new start-up. Everyone faces a crunch when it comes to using tools and products to use for the work and everyone wants to minimize costs on such tools and what better ways if you get them for free.

Time and again businesses focus so much productivity, we discussed this in our earlier post Being Productive or Being Realistic as well. Businesses already are engaged in their own set or worries and tasks, meeting deadlines, upcoming product launches, client meetings, acquiring new deals. The last thing, I believe, that any business owner would want is to hit their heads and to fuss about tools and products that facilitate communications, interations and work productivity. So as Simon Masrani from the Jurassic World says -

Enough about costs!!

Let's look at some of the best tools that some of the leading companies use and are a part of their most trusted products. Some of you might use it on a daily basis unconciously but trust me, they are some of the renowned tools used globally. So here are the Best Business Tools for Business Owners which will lead to higher work producitivity and let you focus on the more imprtant business goals. A must read for all business owners.

1. Coschedule

A lightweight Wordpress plugin which provides a one-stop solution for managing editorial calendars for blogs or websites that regularly publish content. Coschedule can also automate social-media promotion when you publish your posts. Coschedule is free for 14 days but you need to sign up later, currently is priced at $10/month per website.

2. Optimizely

If you are a testing team or a testing company, this is what you'll love. Optimizely. It focuses on making things easy for testers by tracking things that are actually of importance and also has an in-built reporting system. Try Optimizely today.

3. Intercom

Worried if your customers' behavior and want to know more and interact more. Well worry no more, this tool allows you to not only see your users' behavior when they are using your online tools or apps, but it also allows you to interact with them through popups (remember the active cchat pop-ups, something like that) while they are on specific pages or using specific features. A much more clean way of user interaction further boosts your product development and customer service. Intercom isn't free either, monthly pricing packages start from free to $99, depending on how many features you need.

4. Slack

#4 on the list is our Slack, an easy-to-use searchable-team communication platform. It comfortably integrates with many existing software like Google Drive and Mail Chimp. I personally haven't used it but many of my colleagues are on it, think I need to try it once and so should you. Go and try it today.

5. Fuze

Enough of skyping, you need to try Fuze . A video and conference-call service that also allows users to type and send files during calls, record calls for later purposes. It also allows to send participants calendar invitations directly from the app. Can be used via web, its downloadable program (required for video calls just like join.me), mobile app or via a conference-call number. Webinars can also be conducted using Fuze.

6. Mailbox

Originally created to optimize the email experience on mobile. You can swipe new emails to either trash or archive them. It can also schedule emails to reappear in your inbox at a specific period of time. Now, that is wonderful! Mailbox is currently free and available for iPhone, iPad, Android and a beta version for Mac OS.

7. ZenPayroll

Enough about calling, calculating, time-tables. Time for some human resources work, I know you really don't like this part, but remember a classroom has all kind of students right! ZenPayroll makes employee payroll easy. It integrates seamlessly with exisint HR tools and makes managing employees simpler.

8. IconFinder

If you are a web-designer and searching for that tiny component yet crucial for user experience. So if you are in need to find a much suitable icon for your app, website, or depending on what you are searching for, you can get it here. For higher quality, you have a monthly fee.

9. Canva

No Mr. Wayne, I did not spell it wrong, it is Canva . Want to make some great graphics? Canva is the one place you need to be. With hundreds of pre-designed layouts/templates, fonts and image styles that will help you to create some cool online promotional items, flyers or newsletters. Premium design elements are at a price.

10. Zapier

A lot like, If this, Then That (IFTTT), strictly for business though. What don't know IFTTT? Poor you. With IFTTT , you set up "recipes" to assist you with task automation. If you've worked on Salesforce, you will understand the concept of workflows. For a recipe to work, you have to have a channel, a trigger and an action. Examples of channels are Facebook, e-mail, Evernote, LinkedIn and etc.

Per se, you're tagged in a photo on Facebook, you can now create a recipe that would automatically download the image into Dropbox. Cool right?

So Zapier is also of the same sort, you can connect your well-known apps you are already using to automate your work process.

For instance, every time you are assigned a new task in your company's project-management platform, it will automatically create a calendar alert to reminder you to finish it.

11. BambooHR

One more for the HR guys, we love you! So here's one more smart tool called BambooHR . But if you know the real mmeaning of HR (to interact with employees), you will want to get your hands on this. Kinda like an employee portal where HR and employees can browse details, leaves, schedules etc. It has a pricing strcuture based on the number of employees.

12. HelloSign

Need to sign documents electronically? Worry no more, HelloSign is here to help. This edocument signing service lets all parties sign a document digitally. It also allows you to directly upload your documents from google mail and sign them right away. It also has premium packages, but it allows for the signing of up to three documents per month.

13. GoodData

Need business intel for your upcoming sales promotion of the newly revamped product? Well GoodData fits the bil. This agile analytics distribution platform (or BI tool, call it whatever you want) will allow you to gather data from any source and combine, analyze, visualize and store it. It combines with Salesforce and Yammer. Quite useful tool for BI.